Cancer letters
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Emerging evidence suggests that small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) and their host genes (SNHGs) have malfunctioning roles in the development of human cancers. We globally investigated the molecular mechanisms by which snoRNA host gene 6 (SNHG6) promotes hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) progression using human tissues and cell lines. We found that SNHG6 is overexpressed in HCC tissues and in hepatoma cell lines and is closely associated with histologic grade, hepatitis B virus DNA, Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer stage and portal vein tumor thrombus in patients with HCC. ⋯ SNHG6 may act as a competing endogenous RNA, effectively becoming a sink for miR-101-3p and thereby modulating the derepression of zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1, imposing an additional level of post-transcriptional regulation. Functionally, SNHG6 promotes tumor growth and metastasis by inducing epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Further investigations showed that SNHG6 could affect HCC tumorigenesis by binding to up-frameshift protein 1 and regulating Smad7 expression.